Sadly, No!

Brian Faughnan, RedState:

WTO: US Must Drop Protectionism for Trade Deal:
Will Obama Again Choose Unilateralism & the Status Quo?

• Obama continues to antagonize the world community by favoring domestic interests.

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™

As we remember our fallen servicemen and servicewomen today, we should also take time to be thankful for the fact that we have a civilian-controlled military in this country and that our country’s top admirals, air marshals and generals are not sociopaths such as Col. Ralph Peters. Here is Crazy Ralph’s latest essay in which he enthusiastically condones launching military attacks against journalists who posit negative opinions on our country’s foreign policy:

The killers without guns

While the essence of warfare never changes—it will always be about killing the enemy until he acquiesces in our desires or is exterminated—its topical manifestations evolve and its dimensions expand. Today, the United States and its allies will never face a lone enemy on the battlefield. There will always be a hostile third party in the fight, but one which we not only refrain from attacking but are hesitant to annoy: the media.

While this brief essay cannot undertake to analyze the psychological dysfunctions that lead many among the most privileged Westerners to attack their own civilization and those who defend it, we can acknowledge the overwhelming evidence that, to most media practitioners, our troops are always guilty (even if proven innocent), while our barbaric enemies are innocent (even if proven guilty). The phenomenon of Western and world journalists championing the “rights” and causes of blood-drenched butchers who, given the opportunity, would torture and slaughter them, disproves the notion—were any additional proof required—that human beings are rational creatures. Indeed, the passionate belief of so much of the intelligentsia that our civilization is evil and only the savage is noble looks rather like an anemic version of the self-delusions of the terrorists themselves. And, of course, there is a penalty for the intellectual’s dismissal of religion: humans need to believe in something greater than themselves, even if they have a degree from Harvard. Rejecting the god of their fathers, the neo-pagans who dominate the media serve as lackeys at the terrorists’ bloody altar.

This is really good stuff, and it’s only going to get better:

Pretending to be impartial, the self-segregating personalities drawn to media careers overwhelmingly take a side, and that side is rarely ours. Although it seems unthinkable now, future wars may require censorship, news blackouts and, ultimately, military attacks on the partisan media. Perceiving themselves as superior beings, journalists have positioned themselves as protected-species combatants. But freedom of the press stops when its abuse kills our soldiers and strengthens our enemies. Such a view arouses disdain today, but a media establishment that has forgotten any sense of sober patriotism may find that it has become tomorrow’s conventional wisdom.

If I had to sum up Peters’ views in one sentence, it would be this: “Freedom is so precious that we must eliminate it in order to preserve it.”

UPDATE: A commenter over at Roy’s place accurately describes Peters’ master plan:

The ultimate endgame for the General is to be the last man standing…on the planet. His story is bound to conclude bleeding to death in a mall or college campus, surrounded by police, dead civilians all around him. I just hope I’m not in the same town he is when the psychopath snaps and starts unloading his ammunition into the pansies that try to resolve problems with their “pretty words” and “book logic.”

Oh my. Oh, oh my:

The Worst Thing About Gay Marriage

by Sam Schulman

There is a new consensus on gay marriage: not on whether it should be legalized but about the motives of those of us who oppose it. All agree that any and all opposition to gay marriage is explained either by biblical literalism or anti-homosexual bigotry. This consensus is brilliantly constructed to be so unflattering to those of us who will vote against gay marriage–if we are allowed to do so–that even biblical literalists and bigots are scrambling out of the trenches and throwing down their weapons.

OK, so we can expect Schulman from here to advance his argument against gay marriage in a way that does not invoke Jesus and does not call gay people “icky.” I’m skeptical that he’ll be able to pull this off, but I’ll be interested to see him try.

When a gay man becomes a professor or a gay woman becomes a police officer, he or she performs the same job as a heterosexual. But there is a difference between a married couple and a same-sex couple in a long-term relationship. The difference is not in the nature of their relationship, not in the fact that lovemaking between men and women is, as the Catholics say, open to life. The difference is between the duties that marriage imposes on married people–not rights, but rather onerous obligations–which do not apply to same-sex love.

If I’m interpreting this correctly, Schulman is arguing that gay people aren’t miserable enough to be properly married as straight people are. I wonder how Schulman’s wife feels about the fact that he’s finding himself envious of gay couples.

The relationship between a same-sex couple, though it involves the enviable joy of living forever with one’s soulmate, loyalty, fidelity, warmth, a happy home, shopping, and parenting, is not the same as marriage between a man and a woman, though they enjoy exactly the same cozy virtues. These qualities are awfully nice, but they are emphatically not what marriage fosters, and, even when they do exist, are only a small part of why marriage evolved and what it does.

The entity known as “gay marriage” only aspires to replicate a very limited, very modern, and very culture-bound version of marriage. Gay advocates have chosen wisely in this. They are replicating what we might call the “romantic marriage,” a kind of marriage that is chosen, determined, and defined by the couple that enters into it. Romantic marriage is now dominant in the West and is becoming slightly more frequent in other parts of the world. But it is a luxury and even here has only existed (except among a few elites) for a couple of centuries–and in only a few countries. The fact is that marriage is part of a much larger institution, which defines the particular shape and character of marriage: the kinship system.

Ah, now this is the argument I’ve been waiting for! The argument that not only are gay marriages corrupt but that modern hetero marriages are corrupt as well because people are actually enjoying their lives and are not adhering to Medieval traditions where an 80-year-old man married a teenage girl. Let’s see where he takes this:

Consider four of the most profound effects of marriage within the kinship system.

The first is the most important: It is that marriage is concerned above all with female sexuality.

Wait. What?

The very existence of kinship depends on the protection of females from rape, degradation, and concubinage.

Uh, we also have a legal system for that. And I’m pretty sure that rape and degradation occurred pretty frequently in the elderly-man-on-teen-girl days of yore that you seem to be pining for.

This is why marriage between men and women has been necessary in virtually every society ever known. Marriage, whatever its particular manifestation in a particular culture or epoch, is essentially about who may and who may not have sexual access to a woman when she becomes an adult, and is also about how her adulthood–and sexual accessibility–is defined.

So. Marriage, then. It’s actually about controlling what a woman does with her vagina.

Y’know, I actually wish this article had invoked Jesus or just called gay people icky. But no. And it’s only going to get worse:

This most profound aspect of marriage–protecting and controlling the sexuality of the child-bearing sex–is its only true reason for being, and it has no equivalent in same-sex marriage.

OK, dude. What if we made all lesbians wear Ye Olde Chastity Beltes until they found someone to marry. Would you be happy then?

Anyway, it goes on for about a billion more paragraphs, so I’ll just skip to the wholly masterful ending:

Can gay men and women be as generous as we straight men are? Will you consider us as men who love, just as you do, and not merely as homophobes or Baptists? Every day thousands of ordinary heterosexual men surrender the dream of gratifying our immediate erotic desires. Instead, heroically, resignedly, we march up the aisle with our new brides, starting out upon what that cad poet Shelley called the longest journey, attired in the chains of the kinship system–a system from which you have been spared.

Jesus Christ. Does Mrs. Schulman know that her hubby considers their marriage to be “the longest journey” that is “attired in chains” and that tragically forces Sam to “surrender” from realizing his “immediate erotic desires?” Does this sound like a well-adjusted person who should be giving marriage advice to, like, anyone?

(Via.)

UPDATE: Holy crap, how did I miss this part:

Few men would ever bother to enter into a romantic heterosexual marriage–much less three, as I have done–were it not for the iron grip of necessity that falls upon us when we are unwise enough to fall in love with a woman other than our mom.

Three failed marriages and an unresolved Oedipus complex! You must be a devil with the ladies!

(Thanks to Xecklothxayyquou Gilchrist for pointing this gem out to me. I must have read it the first time and then used advanced self-hypno-therapy to convince myself that it wasn’t real.)

UPDATE II: Apologies to the non-crazy Sam Schulman for posting your pic in connection with the crazy Sam Schulman. I have replaced your pic with one that I think accurately depicts the crazy Sam Schulman.

First, the best find on Red State ever, courtesy of Balloon Juice:

Misinterpreting the Christian Response

Posted by roetenks (Profile)
Saturday, May 23rd at 2:44PM EDT

… It’s likely even Jesus would have OK’d water boarding if it would have saved his Mom. He would’ve done the same to save his Dad, or any one of His disciples. For that matter, He even died to save all humans.

And the diarist should know, seeing how ‘[a]s a devout Catholic, Roeten has a high interest in politics. His background as a Chemical Engineer gives him special insights to subjects not normally discussed.’

Subjects like Jesus’ pro-torture bona fides. We’re not sure how being a chemical engineer gives one that particular ‘special insight’ … but then, we’re more qual than quant anyway. Perhaps ‘turn the other cheek’ was an instruction in a lost manual for securing the heads of torture victims.

The Golden Rule — Now With Thumbscrews!

Next, on Meet the Press, David Gregory stumbles into this interesting interchange with Newt Gingrich:

MR. GREGORY: How long should Gitmo remain open?

REP. GINGRICH: Until the war is over.

MR. GREGORY: When is that?

REP. GINGRICH: We’ll — when the terrorists disappear. I mean, you’re faced with…

MR. GREGORY: Well, you’re talking about a pretty long-term proposition here.

Long-term, indeed. We’re reminded of Philip Agre’s frustration with the language being used to define the Sept. 11 attacks and the dangerous future that was being outlined in the then-nascent ‘War on Terror’, just a few days after 9-11:

Let us say, then, that George W. Bush commences a war against Osama bin Laden, or even against the greater abstraction of “terrorism”. What happens then? A state of war is a serious thing. States of war have routinely been used to justify censorship, the curtailing of civil liberties, and the repression of dissidents. States of war are also understood to require the opposition in the legislature to moderate its otherwise essential functions of criticism. Calls are issued to stand behind the political leadership and to display unity, with the implication that the enemy is watching and that failure to unite is tantamount to treason. These are not healthy conditions for a democracy; indeed, they are the opposite of democracy.

War in the old conception was temporary: the idea was explicitly that the state of war would end, and that the normal rules of democracy would resume once their conditions had been reestablished. Civil liberties and the institutions of democratic government are not entirely eliminated during wartime; rather, they are reduced in their scope while retaining their same overall form. Even in conditions of total war mobilization, clear boundaries between the military and civilian sides of society are maintained. But war, we are told, no longer works that way. No such boundaries are possible. It follows, therefore, that “war” in the new sense — war with no beginning or end, no front and rear, and no distinction between military and civilian — is incompatible with democracy, and not just in practice, not just temporarily, but permanently and conceptually. If we conceptualize war the way the defense intellectuals suggest, then to declare war is to destroy the conditions of democracy. War, in this new sense, can never be justified.

So going on nine years later, Gingrich is still pushing for ‘war with no beginning or end’. But can we at least stop inviting him to talk about it on TV?

Gary Bauer, Human Wingnuts Online:
‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ for Christians

• Liberals say “Crusade” as if it were a bad thing.

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™

Shorter Tim Graham:

Tim Graham, NewsBlusters
Daily Kos Reader Favorite: An F-Bomb-Packed Rant Against Cheney

• I found someone on Kos who said “Fuck” twenty-three times which is all the proof anyone needs that all liberals are mean, vicious and unreasonable. And what’s up with recipes for green bean salad and nacho dip over at Kos? I’ll bet we’re talking some non-fat, low-calorie, low-sodium crap that I wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole. I’ll have the three-patty bacon burger, cheese fries and the 64-ounce chocolate milkshake, thank you very much.

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™

ABOVE (left to right): Flaming Outhouse, Warner Todd
Huston

---

One of the occupational hazards of wingnuttery, particularly prolific wingnuttery — where thousands of posts are each cross-posted by the wingnut at each of seventy-eight thousand or so wingnut sites — is, well, piddling on your own feet. Poor Warner Todd Huston, then, with no job and nothing to do but spend all day grinding out post after post, making sure that each finds a happy home on Red State, Renew America, Stop the ACLU, NewsBlusters, Publius Forum, American Thinker, Wingnuttery Today, ConservaBlog, FagsAreSoGay.com, Stop Nancy Botoxsi Now, the Bite Me Obama blog, and so forth. So it’s not too surprising that Warner Todd, who isn’t the fastest bowling ball in the alley in the first place, might take one position one day and then a few days later completely forgot what he said and take exactly the opposite position.

To wit: today we have Warner Todd whooping it up at Red State (and 45 or so other places), pulling his pud in excitement over the decision of Liberty University to ban the college’s Democratic Party club. The idea of banning the opposition apparently gets him harder than a bottle of Viagra and a Lane Bryant catalog. And before the libtards go all Godwin on him, Warner Todd puts on his law professor cap and gown and takes the libs to school:

But it isn’t any violation of free speech, it isn’t censorship, nor is it an un-American decision.
… [P]eople misunderstand what “censorship” is under the American system. …

The simple fact is, though, only government can engage in “censorship.” Only government has the power to oppress speech and enforce that oppression. Liberty University can ban the Democratic Party from its campus all day long and not truly affect the free speech of its students. …

It should be beyond question that, as a private organization, Liberty University has the right to create its own standards within the law and stand by them. What is a more American ideal than having the right to live by your own principles?

Even I have to admire the deftness with which Warner Todd executes the flying-wingnut double reverse fake flea flicker: Banning the Democrats is not a violation of the free speech of the students but is instead simply the University’s exercise of its own free speech rights. Bravo, Warner. Well played. This is even better than the tried-and-true wingnut chestnut that Blacks are the only real racists.

So, now let’s hop into the Sadly, No! time machine and set the flux capacitor for March 20, 2009. Yes, I can hear you complaining that this is such a short ride, hardly worth the effort of time travel, but trust me, it’s worth it.

And here we are. And what’s the title of Warner Todd’s post that we see?

Free Speech For Students… Unless You’re Christian, That Is

I bet you can see where this is going:

Our institutes of “higher” learning … are stridently for freedom of speech and stand 100% behind the concept of open political debate. Well, unless you’re a Christian, that is. Christians, you see, are the only group that our fetid colleges and universities have agreed to discriminate against.

Last week, another example of that well known “tolerance” our schools are so concerned with promulgating was seen in Pomona College in Claremont, California. There two Christian, pro-life students were banned from the Pamona campus. Their crime? Video taping a question-and-answer session with a Planned Parenthood representative invited to speak there.

Private university banning Democrats: no problem-o, the more the merrier, and so forth and such as; private university banning pro-lifers: a scandal of unspeakable dimension. Self-pwnage, Warner Todd, you’re soaking in it.

UPDATE: No-Visible-Means from the comments points out that the Pomona “students” that Warner Todd says were banned weren’t even students at Pomona. So, in Warner’s world, non-student Christians have free speech rights at campuses they do not attend but Democratic students have no rights at a campus that they actually attend. Warner isn’t just soaking in pwnage; he’s waterboarding himself with it.

Pinko Punko and DMC return in the second installation of ‘Going Galt: The Galtgoing’ …

Over at America’s Shittiest Website&#153, Peter “The Mustache of Enhanced Interrogation” Kirsanow tells us all how super cool Dick Cheney’s torture defense was yesterday:

Cheney: Adult [Peter Kirsanow]

A serious, important speech.

Politicians and the media seem unduly impressed by favorability polls, often drawing unwarranted conclusions from them. Since Cheney has relatively high unfavorables, it’s assumed that the public dismisses his statements.

It would be interesting to see the results of a more finely calibrated poll, one that compares how well-respected, competent, and effective the subject is perceived to be relative to similarly situated individuals. As a friend succinctly puts it, “When that big asteroid finally heads toward Earth, who’s the person you’d most want to be in charge?” I suspect Cheney would score at or near the top.

Interesting story!

Here at Sadly, No! Research Laboratories, we recently detonated a hydrogen bomb near a massive pocket of electromagnetic energy, thus creating a parallel timeline where Dick Cheney actually did win the 2008 presidential election and where he did deal with an asteroid assault during the first year of his presidency! Read on, if you dare, to see how this counterfactual history played itself out…

Read the rest of this entry »

Shorter John Hinderaker

ABOVE: John Hinderaker wonders why there are six slices of salami on
his wingtips.

John Hinderaker, Powerlie:
The Most Insanely Biased “News” Story in History

• This article accusing Cheney of misstatements is the biggest lie in the history of lying. I’d tell you why but I’m too sleepy right now. Figure it out for yourself. I’m sick and fucking tired of doing all the work around here. Kthxgnite.

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™